White Whale, Holy Grail!
by AgainstAuthority
Summary: Let's fight a flying enemy with barely any ranged support! We're tactical geniuses!


Subaru tapped his foot, only slightly curmudgeon. His mood would be a lot worse if he wasn't lounging in Crusch's rather lavish office, and if Rem wasn't sitting next to him, but his mood wasn't great all the same.

"So, run me through all this again," he said, rubbing one of his temples, "because I don't think I quite get some of the choices you made regarding to what kind of troops we're taking to hunt the whale."

Crusch, sitting opposite of him, sighed, and shuffled her papers.  
"Okay," she said, "I'm not sure why you forgot so quickly after I just told you, but, here we go. For the white whale hunting party, I decided to enlist as our frontmen: myself, Wilhelm, and a select few other specialists. Supporting us from behind are three regiments of infantrymen, at our flanks we will have two smaller parties of infantry, we have Anastasia's mercenaries acting as a skirmish unit, behind us we have two rows of mages, and our wildcard will be you and Rem." Crusch cleared her throat, and put down the papers. "What, exactly, do you see fault with, Subaru?"

He briefly stroked his chin, and said: "where's the archers?" punctuating his question by raising both his palms.

Crusch opened her mouth, as if wanting to say something, but closed it again, then quickly threw a glance at Ferris, like she needed his support, but he only shrugged. A silence fell over the room.

"The what?" Crusch finally said.

"The archers."

"The what?"

Subaru's brow creased. "Archers, damnit! You know? The guys with the bows... and, like, the arrows."

Crusch leaned her elbows on her desk, and tapped her fingertips together a few times. She again glanced at Ferris, and again received the same response from him. "Archers." she stated. "Right. For what, exactly, would we need them?"

This time Subaru needed support, stealing a look at Rem, unsure if the royal candidate he asked for help was messing with him. The blue haired maid shrugged.

"Okay. What do we need archers for?" he began, "Uh, I don't know- to shoot at the whale, maybe? I mean, how the hell are we going to get to the whale in the first place? What's a guy with a sword on the ground going to do? _Jump up?_ Do we have _any_ ranged support at all?"

Crusch hesitated. "W-well, we have mages who can attack the whale while it's airborne, and several of our specialists, including Wilhelm, can definitely reach the whale by jumping."

"So I was right- you _will_ be jumping up. Or at least, Wilhelm will. Yeah, that's a fantastic idea. But what will the other guys on the ground do? Nothing?"

"As I was saying, we have mages who can cast-"

"Hold up, Crusch, excuse me for a second." Subaru interrupted Crusch, and he turned to his partner, "Rem, back me up here. Wasn't there something about the whale and magic? What was it? Please refresh my memory."  
The maid tried to hide her smile when she responded. "The whale is highly resistant to magic. I doubt the mages will do too much damage, if any at all."

"Yeah, what she said," Subaru nodded, and crossed his arms.

A sweatdrop rolled down Crusch's temple, and she shifted position a few times before she responded. "I, I suppose you're right. The whale is resistant to magic, that's true. I... never really thought about that."

Subaru cocked his eyebrow. "You _hadn't thought about that?_ Damn, weren't you supposed to be some military genius or something? Man, I'm regretting making this deal with you now. Maybe we should contact Priscilla instead. Rem, what do you think? Shall we do that?"

Rem didn't think much at all, and instead still struggled to hide a grin.

"Alright, alright," Crusch quickly replied, "I admit there might be a logistic error in my plan. Subaru, what do you suggest?"

Subaru grinned, sat up straight, and began: "Replace all infantrymen's swords with bows and arrows. The whale's flying like five kilometres in the air, swords won't help them much."

"I am not familiar with the term _kilomet_ _re_ _,_ I'm afraid." Crusch said. By now she feared her end of the deal would slip through her fingers.

"Kilometres, kilometres," Subaru mumbled, "the metric system... Yeah, I suppose you wouldn't know it. Okay, the whale is flying like twenty furlongs up in the air, so we have to be able to reach it at all times to efficiently fight this battle. The infantrymen can keep their swords of course, but please give them all a bow and arrow. In fact, give them longbows too. And crossbows. And spears. And slingshots. And for the bows, we should ammass all different types of arrows. Hooked arrows. Serated arrows. Poisonous arrows. Fire arrows. Explosive arrows too! And guns. Do you guys have guns in this world?" Subaru looked at Rem for confirmation. Her face was blank. "Okay, no guns. Remind me to introduce them to you later. Anyway, I think that's about it." Finished with his speech, he sank back into his chair.

Crusch nodded slowly, and hoped somebody had written all of that down.  
"Anything else?" she hesitantly suggested.

"Actually, now that you mention it," Subaru said, and sat back up again, "bows aren't all we need. We need like, trebuchets too, to fling rocks and stuff at the whale. Shit, we can even fling _people_ with the trebuchets if you want, since you were so keen on the jumping idea. Oh, and we need those massive stationary crossbow turrets. Ballistas? Yeah, that's the word. And we need those to fire harpoons basically. We're taking down a whale for god's sake! Where's the harpoons?"  
Subaru paused for a second, letting everyone in the room reflect on the matter of where the harpoons were.  
"And then," Subaru continued, "maybe we can tie ropes to the ends of the harpoons, so that when we hit the whale with them, we can try to pull it down or at least keep it in check."

Crusch scratched the back of her head, both eyebrows raised. "Uh-uh. Yeah. That could work." she said.

"Thank you," Subaru replied.

Rem nodded approvingly, and patted him on the shoulder.

* * *

When Subaru and his entourage finally left her alone, after they had ironed out more details for the hunting party, Crusch sank back in her chair, opened one of the drawers in her desk, and swiftly pulled out a jar of whiskey.

"I knew I was forgetting something," she mumbled darkly, and popped off the lid of the jar.  
She massaged the bridge of her nose, and took a sip straight from the bottle. "Archers. Goddamnit."


End file.
